[OT] Will I need a special driver for a HP (agilent) E1301B ?

[Ben]

I realize this is off topic but I was hoping someone could give a clue as to what driver to use.

I have bee given a chassis built by HP that is called a "E1301B VXI-mainframe".

It has a E1326B digital multimeter in it as well as a E1345A 16-channel relay multiplexer installed.

I found what appear to be LV drivers that are identified as being for the the multimeter and the multiplexer, but I could not find anything that looks like it will work with a "E1301B".

If any of you are familiar with this type of hardware and know which drivers I should be using, I would be very grateful if you gave me some pointers.

Hoping that this is easier than it looks,

Ben

[Dennis_Knutson]

Ben,

My knowledge is a little rusty but I'll try to help. A lot will depend on your slot-0 controller. You need something in the furthermost left slot that acts as a controller. The simplest and fastest is an embedded controller. This is a pc that you can install LabVIEW/MAX/VISA on and use the drivers that you download. A little more complicated is to have a MXI controller. This is a board that plugs into slot 0 and there's a cable that connects to a board that plugs into the pc. The MXI controller from NI should work with no problems with the drivers. With both of these, it was a simple matter of using the correct VISA resource name. The resource name would be something like VXI0::3:INSTR. With MAX and all NI hardware, I never had a problem. A third type of controller is a slot-0 GPIB controller. This connects to the pc via a regular GPIB cable. NI doesn't make one this as far as I know but in theory, it should work. The VISA resource name then would be something like GPIB-VXI0::3::INSTR. About all I can remember is that the one time I had to use a slot-0 GPIB controller from HP, I struggled a long time before I could get everything to work. I don't know if this helps you at all but maybe it's a start.

[Ben]

"I had to use a slot-0 GPIB controller from HP, I struggled a long time before I could get everything to work."

That is the critter!

Thank you for that lead.

So it sounds like I may be able to get one of those drivers to work through that controller if I find the right device syntax.

Thanks you,

Ben

[Dennis_Knutson]

I think so. I just wish I could remember all of the steps I had to take. It's not nice getting old.

[Ben]

I hear you Dennis.

You would think that as many times as my mother warned me to "never get old" I went ahead and did it anyway.

Well if we have to make the trip, it is alot easier when you have have support along the way.

Thanks,

Ben

[JohnM 64]

Hi Ben,

As Dennis was saying, it is possible to use the HP GPIB controller you have, but you will need to investigate how this device transfers information from program to the GPIB bus to the VXI bus. I can imagine that the syntax can get tricky, but I personally have not used the 1301B.

And just to clarify, in addition to the embedded controllers and the MXI-2 controllers, NI also makes a GPIB controller and a brand new USB VXI controller that was just released. You can use any of these devices to be the slot 0 controller of your system. Here's a link to the product page for the new USB controller, and from there you can navigate around the website to find the other controllers.

USB 2.0 VXI Controller

If you have questions that come up while working with the 1301B, let us know, and we'll do our best to help you out.

Have a great day!

John M
Applications Engineer

[Ben]

OK, i promised to post the solution.

It turns out the Instrument driver from the NI web-site did not work for me. Afterlooking back at it, it does not appear that it ever could work because the first command sent to the mainframe had a typo in it.

I resorted to reading the book (which my sister claims is counter to my genetic make-up).

It turns out if you are using the correct mix of options in the HP 75000 VXI mainframe you do not need to download any special drivers into the 1301 controller. The user manual for 1301B controller lists which gizmos do not need specail drivers.

In my case I am using a 1326B multimeter with a couple of E1345 muxes and these do not need specail drivers.

Next:
The HP 75000 mainframe uses special rules regarding addressing of the devices within the chassis. If you want to talk to a device as a unique element (in my case I wanted to take readings from the multimeter) it has to have a chassis address that is a multiple of "8". The chassis address is then devided by "8" and that beocmes the secondary address of the the multimeter.

Next:
Devices that have an address that are not multiples of "8" are associated with the device which is the next lowest multiple of "8". They do not show up unique devices and just look like they are part of the other device.

Example:
My multimeter was at address 24, and I had two mux boards that were at 25, and 26. Since the multimeter was at address 24 and 24/8 = 3, the multimeter showed up as secondary address "3". I never had to worry about the muxes.

For the rest of this message, please refer to the images and code in the zip file attached.

I am using a NI 488 interface so I went to Measurement and Automation Explorer and right clicked on the GPIB interface and did a "scan for Intruments". This found the 1301 VXI chassis and the multimeter. See "ScanForInstruments.JPG".

I then selected the "VISA properties" tab for the multimeter to find the syntax for the multimeter. this is shown in "Instrument1VISAProperties.JPG".

I then used that address in the attached VI that demonstrates how to scan multiple input from the multimemter.

I got the command by reading the manual.

I hope this helps someone else in the future.

Ben

[JenK]

Ben,

I forwarded this to Shawn and John. As you can see, I went ahead and gave you stars on all your posts (for this thread) :). Have a great day!

JenK

[Ben]

Thank you Jen!

That will "keep me coming back for more".

Ben